Review: Acer and Haswell give Chrome OS the battery life it deserves

Enlarge / Acer's newest Chromebook, also called the C7. We'll call it by its full model number, the C720, to distinguish it from last year's C710.

Andrew Cunningham

Specs at a glance: Acer Chromebook C720

Screen

11.6" 1366×768 TFT LCD (135 ppi)

OS

Chrome OS

CPU

1.4GHz Intel Celeron 2955U

RAM

4GB DDR3 (non-upgradeable)

GPU

Intel HD Graphics (integrated)

HDD

16GB SSD

Networking

Dual-band 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0

Ports

1x USB 2.0, 1x USB 3.0, HDMI, SD card slot, headphone jack

Size

11.34 x 8.03 x 0.75" (288 x 203.96 x 19.05 mm)

Weight

2.76 lbs (1.25 kg)

Battery

3990 mAh

Warranty

1 year

Price

$249.99

Other perks

Webcam, 100GB of Google Drive storage for two years, 30-day Google Play Music All Access trial

The technology year runs in cycles. CPUs and GPUs, SSDs and SoCs, phones and tablets—once product lines get established, new models tend to come out just about every year or so. Now that Google's Chromebooks are finding their groove, they're falling into the same kind of pattern. Last year we saw an ARM Chromebook, followed shortly after by a cheaper and better-performing Intel Chromebook from Acer. This year we got another ARM Chromebook, followed shortly after by a cheaper and better performing Intel Chromebook from Acer. And so it goes.

Acer's newest Chromebook is only a modest improvement over last year's product in most ways, with one exception: it gains a new CPU based on the Haswell architecture, along with the power-saving enhancements that implies. The original C7 was already faster than both ARM Chromebooks with an older Sandy Bridge-based processor, and by leap-frogging the Ivy Bridge architecture and going straight to Haswell, Acer is only going to widen that gap. Performance isn't everything, though, and the HP Chromebook 11's best selling points were its nice keyboard and great, high quality screen.

To be entirely honest, most product reviews are exercises in minutiae hunting. You’ll go far if you can explain why this 1080p 13-inch Windows laptop from Company X is better or worse than this 1080p 13-inch Windows laptop from Company Y. That's not the case here: comparing the Chromebook 11 to the C720 reveals some refreshingly clear-cut differences.

Body, build quality, and screen

The C720 is unmistakably related to the old C7 Chromebook, but the design has been tightened up and refined. The once removable battery has been moved into the case itself, and that (along with other smaller changes like soldering the RAM to the system board) has allowed Acer to slim the laptop's body from 1.08 inches to 0.75 inches. It's also lighter at 2.76 pounds, down from the 3.0 pounds of the C7.

Enlarge/ The smooth, gray plastic lid is plain but clean in its design.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The hard plastic shell on the bottom of the laptop. It's not backed by any kind of metal, but it does feel stiff and sturdy.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The C720 brings more ports to the table than the Chromebook 11. There's a (standard) power jack, full-size HDMI port, a USB 3.0 port, and a headphone jack on the left.

Enlarge/ The computer's fan vent on the back. There's a cutout to the right of it that might conceivably be for a SIM tray, but Acer doesn't offer a cellular model at present.

Andrew Cunningham

Aside from being a little more streamlined and a little more svelte, the broad strokes of the C720 remain the same: it's constructed of matte gray plastic on the top and textured black plastic on the bottom. The build quality certainly isn't bad, especially considering the $249 price tag, and while there's a little creaking and flexing throughout the case, it feels pretty solid overall. The hinge and lid in particular are less wobbly and bendy than the ones in the HP Chromebook 11. The design isn't as clean and simple as the one in the Chromebook 11, but it's not bad either.

The new C720 also gives up a couple of ports that the C7 included, most notably the 100 megabit Ethernet jack and VGA port; neither will be missed by most consumers at this point, though businesses and schools with older projectors may grumble at the lack of VGA. You still have more options than the Chromebook 11, though—the C720 includes one USB 2.0 port, one USB 3.0 port, a full-size HDMI port, an SD card reader, a Kensington lock slot, and a headphone jack. It doesn't include the unique and convenient micro-USB port from the HP Chromebook 11, but otherwise its port selection is far superior.

Enlarge/ The screen doesn't look so much different from the Chromebook 11's (right) when viewed from an optimal angle.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ View it from above or the side, and the screen washes out very quickly.

Andrew Cunningham

The screen is another story. It's an 11.6-inch 1366×768 TN panel that's in line with the ones from previous-generation Chromebooks. It's bright enough, but colors are washed out, and black levels suffer visibly compared to the Chromebook 11's great IPS panel. Even worse are the viewing angles, which quickly blow out the screen if you're viewing it from very much above or very much below. The panel has the same resolution and pixel density as the Chromebook 11's, but it is in every way the inferior display. The only point to recommend it is that it's matte instead of glossy and will therefore be less reflective if you're outside or in a brightly lit room.

Keyboard, trackpad, and speakers

Enlarge/ The keyboard's keys aren't quite full-size, and key travel is still shallow compared to the Chromebook 11.

Andrew Cunningham

The keyboard uses a different layout than before, one that makes more concessions to Chromebook convention. This includes not just the Search key where the Caps Lock key normally goes, but the double-wide right Ctrl and Alt buttons and the power button embedded in the row of dedicated function keys. The adjusted layout points to this being a purpose-built Chromebook rather than the tweaked Windows laptop that Acer gave us last year. It remains non-backlit, but that's not a surprise in a laptop in this price range.

The tiny arrow keys we complained about last year have been half fixed—the left and right ones are now full height, but the up and down keys remain smaller and half height. This seems like an odd choice, given that most scrolling is vertical and not horizontal. The general feel of the keyboard isn't as good as the Chromebook 11 (which is admittedly an outlier among cheap laptops) since the keys are slightly smaller than full-size and the travel isn't as deep, but it does feel marginally less mushy than in the old C7 Chromebook. The plastic multitouch trackpad is a little small, but it's reasonably clicky and easy to drag your finger across. It tracked my finger accurately and responded well to the basic gestures Chrome OS supports (tap-to-click, tapping with two fingers to right-click, and two-fingered scrolling are the ones I use the most frequently).

The laptop's two stereo speakers point down at the desk instead of up at you through the keyboard as they do in the Chromebook 11, but they share many of the same properties: both get loud but distort at higher ranges, and both lack much in the way of bass.

The once removable battery has been moved into the case itself, and that (along with other smaller changes like soldering the RAM to the system board) has allowed Acer to slim the laptop's body from 1.08 inches to 0.75 inches.

Does that mean that we can expect another "1 out of 10" repair-ability rating from iFixit?

Would love to see the 'netbooks' back. These chromebooks are priced similarly, have similar or lower specs but seem way less useful for me.They have a nicer build quality though, which would be good to see back in netbooks.

$300, 13 inch, and 1920x1200 (or at least x1080), and I might actually buy one. It would suit admirably for about 95% of what I do outside of gaming; I didn't game much on my laptop even when I had a gaming-class laptop.

It occurred to me to wonder why they don't put a slimport on it; it would suit for most business and education users (those using a Chromebook certainly, I would think), and would have minimal footprint.

$300, 13 inch, and 1920x1200 (or at least x1080), and I might actually buy one. It would suit admirably for about 95% of what I do outside of gaming; I didn't game much on my laptop even when I had a gaming-class laptop.

It occurred to me to wonder why they don't put a slimport on it; it would suit for most business and education users (those using a Chromebook certainly, I would think), and would have minimal footprint.

When they go to 13" it usually means they take up the extra space with more battery and weight exceeds 3 lbs, which means it starts to lose its convenience. I love the utility of 11"-ers because they tend to be < 3lbs. and are easy to tote around in one hand.

I mostly wonder about how well the keyboard will work out once ChromeOS is replaced.

I'd love a chromebook with a 1920x1080 screen, an i3, 4gb of RAM, 32GB local storage, decent keyboard and priced around $500. Could something be built at this price point with these specs? I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

I mentioned this in the previous C720 article, but damn, they scrapped a bunch of the little things I actually liked in the C710 Page-Up/Down, Home/End, VGA, removable battery... Stuff that gave it a leg up on the Samsung Chromebook I was comparing with in-store. At least the new battery last longer...

(On a side note, the Samsung consistently flubbed "Test" as "TEst" when I typed on the keyboard, and the body flexed more when I lifted it (though this may be due to the C710's battery being absent). The only thing I preferred about the Samsung was the matte screen, and I guess USB 3.0.)

Would love to see the 'netbooks' back. These chromebooks are priced similarly, have similar or lower specs but seem way less useful for me.They have a nicer build quality though, which would be good to see back in netbooks.

The difference is that ChromeOS can actually run well on these hardware specs, whereas Windows never ran very well on netbooks...

I'd love a chromebook with a 1920x1080 screen, an i3, 4gb of RAM, 32GB local storage, decent keyboard and priced around $500. Could something be built at this price point with these specs? I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

I think they could get it down closer to $400 - you can get an original 13" i5 Yoga with touchscreen for less than $600..

I'd jump if it were a 13" touchscreen and i5, but not sure if they could hit the $500 pricepoint with much of a margin (would probably still jump at an i3).. even better though, make the screen a detachable android tablet - basically a slightly larger TF300 with a keyboard dock that is an i5 ChromeOS box with larger harddrive and extra ram (bonus being able to use the dock with an external monitor w/out the screen too)..

I just skipped ahead to the only part of an Arstechnica review that is actually important, where reviewers betray their secret hearts and reveal their innermost biases.

Behold, I give you... The trackpad section!

Quote:

The plastic multitouch trackpad is a little small, but it's reasonably clicky and easy to drag your finger across. It tracked my finger accurately and responded well to the basic gestures Chrome OS supports (tap to click, tapping with two fingers to right-click, and two-fingered scrolling are the ones I use the most frequently).

I wonder if they could have underclocked the processor and made it passive cooled. I'd imagine that would still be faster than the Chrome 11 (which I own one) and the battery life would be out of this world.

Would love to see the 'netbooks' back. These chromebooks are priced similarly, have similar or lower specs but seem way less useful for me.They have a nicer build quality though, which would be good to see back in netbooks.

The difference is that ChromeOS can actually run well on these hardware specs, whereas Windows never ran very well on netbooks...

I am not sure the value in comparing ChromeOS today with Windows yesterday... Starting with Windows 7, you can run Windows on some rather ridiculously low-end hardware.

The new netbooks/convertibles that exist today run Windows 7/8/8.1 just fine!

I'm also not sure about having the power button the keyboard (it looks like it's right where I normally reach for the page buttons on my thinkpad). Hit it a few times, I guess I'll learn.

You have to hold the button. If you just tap it, the windows move "forward" and start to fade out. Hold it about a second and let go, and you get the lock screen. From there you can click in the bottom left to shut down. Hold it even longer, maybe three seconds, and it will shut down. So difficult to really screw up.

At least that's how it works on the predecessor C710 I'm typing this on, with its somewhat quiet but definitely audible fan. The power button is separate, above the top left of the keyboard.

$300, 13 inch, and 1920x1200 (or at least x1080), and I might actually buy one. It would suit admirably for about 95% of what I do outside of gaming; I didn't game much on my laptop even when I had a gaming-class laptop.

It occurred to me to wonder why they don't put a slimport on it; it would suit for most business and education users (those using a Chromebook certainly, I would think), and would have minimal footprint.

If I'm not mistaken, you're still lucky to find 1920x1080 screens in $1000 ultrabooks; hoping for one in a Chromebook is rather unlikely at this point

I have zero interest in ChromeOS whatsoever, but I find this little laptop quite appealing given the relative ease of installing Linux.

I'm probably one of the few people that likes their netbook. It's small, it's light, and it was cheap enough that it's somewhat expendible. I don't have to care too much about it getting damaged, and it gets unceremoniously chucked into whatever bad I'm using when I travel.

Best of all, when looking for a netbook 4 and a half years ago, I chose based on battery life. Even though its battery has definitely aged, it still gets a shade over 5 hours of runtime when playing back ripped DVDs, and a bit more than that if I'm doing actual work. Many laptops don't even get that when they're new.

Yes, Atom isn't particularly fast, but it's been just about enough for what I've used it for. Its screen is fairly crappy, and the keyboard could definitely be better.

Up until now I've been pretty much resigned to buying a Macbook Air when this thing dies. Ultrabooks with similar battery life aren't really any cheaper than the Air. I was dreading that, though - I wouldn't treat an expensive laptop the way I do my Netbook.

The celeron 847 showed me that even a kneecapped Sandy Bridge performs quite well and consumes little power, and this thing has a 30% clock speed on top of the (admittedly slight) architectural improvements.

$250 for a Haswell system with a decent resolution bump, 4GB of ram and a standard mSATA slot for an SSD? With another $100 for a ~100GB SSD, I'm going to be all over this.

I have zero interest in ChromeOS whatsoever, but I find this little laptop quite appealing given the relative ease of installing Linux.

I'm probably one of the few people that likes their netbook. It's small, it's light, and it was cheap enough that it's somewhat expendible. I don't have to care too much about it getting damaged, and it gets unceremoniously chucked into whatever bad I'm using when I travel.

Best of all, when looking for a netbook 4 and a half years ago, I chose based on battery life. Even though its battery has definitely aged, it still gets a shade over 5 hours of runtime when playing back ripped DVDs, and a bit more than that if I'm doing actual work. Many laptops don't even get that when they're new.

Yes, Atom isn't particularly fast, but it's been just about enough for what I've used it for. Its screen is fairly crappy, and the keyboard could definitely be better.

Up until now I've been pretty much resigned to buying a Macbook Air when this thing dies. Ultrabooks with similar battery life aren't really any cheaper than the Air. I was dreading that, though - I wouldn't treat an expensive laptop the way I do my Netbook.

The celeron 847 showed me that even a kneecapped Sandy Bridge performs quite well and consumes little power, and this thing has a 30% clock speed on top of the (admittedly slight) architectural improvements.

$250 for a Haswell system with a decent resolution bump, 4GB of ram and a standard mSATA slot for an SSD? With another $100 for a ~100GB SSD, I'm going to be all over this.

Would love to see the 'netbooks' back. These chromebooks are priced similarly, have similar or lower specs but seem way less useful for me.They have a nicer build quality though, which would be good to see back in netbooks.

Why less useful? Because the extra inch in size? I use an Acer D250 quite a lot and I'd gladly exchange that extra inch for better everything. To me the chromebooks are the new netbooks.

And then we have the Thinkpad Master Race... Twice the money but oh ye gods how lovely they are.

I've got 2 of the 710s and like them quite a bit. It might be because I'm so used to a bigger laptop with a bunch of stuff in it, but there is very little flex. I added 2 GB to each of these and it's a huge difference, especially when you have a bunch of tabs open. I picked up the second one via Groupon, it was a refurb, but it was only $129.

For what I need while away from my desk this works great. And if I need my desktop, the Remote app works pretty well.

What I find funny is that many people ask me about it, but once they realize that it doesn't run windows, they aren't interested. Hell my neighbor said he couldn't use it because he needs IE. But he didn't need IE for a real reason, it's just what he's used to. But then CenturyLink came out today to put in new DSL and the only question the tech asked was, "No viruses for $200?"

$300, 13 inch, and 1920x1200 (or at least x1080), and I might actually buy one. It would suit admirably for about 95% of what I do outside of gaming; I didn't game much on my laptop even when I had a gaming-class laptop.

It occurred to me to wonder why they don't put a slimport on it; it would suit for most business and education users (those using a Chromebook certainly, I would think), and would have minimal footprint.

If I'm not mistaken, you're still lucky to find 1920x1080 screens in $1000 ultrabooks; hoping for one in a Chromebook is rather unlikely at this point

When they go to 13" it usually means they take up the extra space with more battery and weight exceeds 3 lbs, which means it starts to lose its convenience. I love the utility of 11"-ers because they tend to be < 3lbs. and are easy to tote around in one hand.

I mostly wonder about how well the keyboard will work out once ChromeOS is replaced.

There are quite a few 13" and 15" laptops with good battery life and well under 3lb. But, even at 3lb or even 4lb it's readily totable.

And 11" is too small for any significant use; my tablet is barely smaller than that (and a markedly better screen, to boot).

If Acer can stick a huge battery in this thing, HP could hace done the same with their Chromebook. I wouldn't mind skimping on the screen to get something like 20 hours battery life from the ARM based SoC.

As it is, an Intel based system gets more battery life than an ARM one.

I mentioned this in the previous C720 article, but damn, they scrapped a bunch of the little things I actually liked in the C710 Page-Up/Down, Home/End, VGA, removable battery... Stuff that gave it a leg up on the Samsung Chromebook I was comparing with in-store. At least the new battery last longer...

(On a side note, the Samsung consistently flubbed "Test" as "TEst" when I typed on the keyboard, and the body flexed more when I lifted it (though this may be due to the C710's battery being absent). The only thing I preferred about the Samsung was the matte screen, and I guess USB 3.0.)

As someone who has a 710 and loves it as my Linux laptop I agree with you. Why couldn't they have kept the keyboard layout from the 710 at least?

I like the keyboard better on the older C7 and the 320 gig hard drive is nice if you wanted Linux on it. I would not miss the missing vga or ethernet. That Haswell processor and longer battery life is the huge difference. I put Crouton/Ubuntu on my older C7, and I'm thinking Ubuntu would be quite nice on this newer version with more ram and a faster processor and longer running battery.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.